doctor who - THE WATERS OF MARS

[Team Banzai]

i thought it was dark and brilliant - wonderful acting ... sets the stage for tennant's final episodes perfectly.. bloody marvelous!

[streetrw]

CONTAINS SPOILERS THE SIZE OF, WELL, MARS.


I thought it was fairly poor. Most of the time he didn't do very much: partly because he kept saying he couldn't, and partly because there wasn't anything he could do (so they filled the time with running up and down corridors). Then suddenly he decided he could do stuff after all and he turned into an thundering arrogant git. And then he suddenly gets scared by the sight of an Ood in a purple shirt. More interestingly, the Doctor's subconscious knowledge of the Universe looks a bit like the BBC's news website.

And then there's the trail for the big Christmas special, wherein yet again Russell T Davies proves yet again he just doesn't know when to stop. All his big emotive farewells worked because they were just that - farewells - and his continuing obsession with bringing back the dead or forever lost cheapens those moments. The loss of Rose worked because we knew - KNEW - KNEW - it was permanent and RTD went through paragraphs of stuff explaining how she could never NEVER NEVER come back, and then that went for naught because oh, apparently she can come back after all. Last year we had the big farewell for Donna which, though not emotive for her, was emotive for him and she must never EVER EVER be reminded of what happened. And now for the big Christmas spectacular (which somehow has to top last year's premise of the attempted destruction of The Entirety Of Absolutely Everything) he's brought her back AND Bernard Cribbins AND the Master. By all means nod to the past but stop trading on the glories of the past, and invent your own villains and monsters and nemesisesises. Back in the old days The Master kept escaping justice by the skin of his teeth and living to fight another day, but last time he was dead - killed and cremated, which usually does the trick. The Master may be many things but he's not immortal and he's not invulnerable and he can't just transfer his consciousness into an inanimate object (like a ring). This is pandering to teenage fanboy idiocy at its silliest and shallowest, and to hell with logic or plausibility or even a basic sense of the idea of death.

[Spencer]

I liked the bit before he decided to go back and save them, the lighting on his face in that space helmet was aces and that whole scene was very moody and dark , but why do they have to crank the music up everytime someone does more than walk ? the problem witht he show under rtd is that it doesn't know what it wants to be (serious, fun, swashbuckling) and so each episode pulls in a 100 different directions going from the sublime to the ridiculous in a heartbeat

And I thought it was a bit crappy the way he suddenly seemed to crumble after seeing the ood. Was thinking for a minute how brave of them if they were going to turn him into some kind of meglomaniac that brings about his own demise....but then RTD would never do that. think the next series will have a much darker tone i just hope this yahoo they got playing the doctor is up to it.

[sherbetbizarre]

each episode pulls in a 100 different directions going from the sublime to the ridiculous in a heartbeat

Always my problem with the series...

[Laymonite]

I loved the episode. The baddies were pretty scary looking (interestingly, according to DW Confidential they rejected the original designs cos they were too scary - I want to see those designs!) and it was nice to see the Doctor arrive in a fictionalized Pompei style "fixed" event.

And I have to say the Doctor pulling in all different emotional directions towards the end was marvellous. Almost like he's starting to crack up completely. One of Tennant's best performances.

I skipped the preview to the Christmas specials, I want it to be as much of a surprise as possible

[**suzy**]

I thought it was brilliant, you could see the torment on his face while he was walking away and having to listen to them being picked off one by one by the water. I actually thought that he was going to leave them. I thought it was good using water though, water can get in anywhere and everywhere. They only needed one drop of water and they changed.